Stability

The lights are too bright

or my eyes are too dark.

Milk and bread and the smell

of something rotting under the fresh produce.

I'm walking straight but the floor

is moving. The other people move through it

like they don't feel it tilting,

like the world is solid underneath their feet.

My feet don't believe in solid.

I sit down on a crate of apples.

The waxy perfect skin of them,

each one exactly the same,

each one identical and wrong.

Derek—that's his name, I see it

on the plastic rectangle—

asks if I'm okay.

The concern makes it worse.

His kindness turns the room

sideways. I can see his mouth

moving but not hear what he's saying.

I'm not okay.

The floor isn't flat.

The apples aren't real.

Nothing is stable.

He's still standing there,

waiting for an answer.

I tell him I'm fine.

It's what people say

when they're falling.